this is not a grave
by cosmofluous
Summary: Haise regains his memories and is stripped of his privileges as a CCG investigator. His makeshift family visits him in Cochlea, until the inevitable end. AU from Tsukiyama Operation.
1. Mado Akira

**vii.**

 **"scapegoat"**

'Akira. Do you hate me?'

On the third floor of Cochlea, the air has a curious quality. It's heavy and stale, but brittle and porous at the same time. Dead air. It's a creature with its entrails scraped out for preservation, pores pushed open and leaking, mind ravaged by some unidentifiable madness not unlike a many-legged parasite. Akira thinks of "cochlea" as an inner cavity of the ear, sending sound vibrations as nerve impulses to the brain. She thinks of the silence which permeates the white walls like a corrosive liquid substance.

'I despise you,' she says.

The figure behind the glass bows his dark head. If Akira looks closely, some white remains like bits of snow clinging to the ends of black strands. It echoes the white of the straitjacket restraining him, gleaming buckles strapped tight. If Akira thinks of him as Haise, she will break. If Akira thinks of him as Kaneki Ken, Centipede, Eyepatch, she will break.

Is it pity that wars with loathing? Loathing mixed with black fury, with crushing loneliness and despair. She remembers hot tears like acid tracking down her face.

'You killed my father, Mado Kureo,' she accuses him, and the figure hunches in on himself. He is a defendant with no defence, hands chained before the guillotine while she throws at him epithets like rotten pieces of fruit. She knows that Eyepatch did not personally murder her father. She knows that Eyepatch was connected with Rabbit and Fueguchi, who did. She knows that he stopped Amon from saving her father - _Amon the goody-two-shoes, Amon the rising star of the CCG -_ but was reluctant to kill him. Amon. _Amon_.

'You killed Amon Koutarou,' she spits, and watches the epithet burst as easily as an overripe tomato on impact, red splashing everywhere. _Murderer. Killer._

'No.'

'No?' Akira's lips pinch, pull back into a sneer. Her nails dig into her purse. She wants another death to throw, match to the flame.

The figure – _Haise –_ raises his head again and his eyes are wild with some unspeakable emotion. They are so light and so dark at the same time. Grey like smoke rising in a summer sky, grey like rain-wet asphalt gleaming underneath weeping storm clouds. She imagines the sclera of one dyed with black ink, iris flaring bloody with RC cells. But no, Haise – _no, no, no, he's not Haise, he's some other person, he's not Haise, she didn't agree to this_ – is pumped so full of RC suppressants he can't possibly reveal his single, damning kakugan.

He says desperately, 'I didn't kill him. He promised me.' He choked out, 'He said if he died that would make me a killer.'

She would break the glass and drag him out through the shards if she could. Even if she thinks it's reinforced with veins of quinque steel. But behind it, the voice of Kaneki Ken is undeniably the voice of some noble martyr, muffled, pleading, threaded through with a vulnerable and immortal conviction. Unshakeable faith of the sort that takes lives.

She hates it. She despises him.

When Arima first left Haise in her care, she knew that he was an amnesiac half-ghoul who had had hostile relations with the CCG. She knew exactly which cases he had been involved in, and she thought that she had more than enough professionalism and the emotional capacity to handle it. Standing face to face with him for first introductions was not as easy as she thought it would be, but the burden of knowledge was one with which she became accustomed, both its burning weight and its need to be hidden. Eventually, the person and identity of Sasaki Haise became separated from Kaneki Ken. One cannot spend a significant amount of time with another without becoming emotionally attached. And, helplessly, bitterly, that was what Akira had become. Attached.

'Akira, I'm sorry.'

What right does he have to use her first name? Akira covers her face, but not before she sees the tears in the corners of his eyes, catching the fluorescent light. His voice is small when he speaks again, and it's as if he's ten years old, a defenceless, abandoned thing to be protected. His words are too old for him to be that boy.

'I'm not asking you to forgive me for my part in your father's death. I don't have that right. And, in a way, it was part of the long feud between humans and ghouls. I can't apologise for all of it. And I can't ask you to forgive me for any of it.'

'You disgust me,' she says, a parting insult. She gets up to leave and slams the door as she does, ignoring the final beseeching look on his face.

What a martyr.

He is too much like Amon Koutarou.


	2. Mutsuki Tooru

**vi.**

 **"sinners and saints"**

The tapping of dress shoes on smooth cement echoes. Like droplets of water spreading in concentric circles over a still pond, the sound disrupts the silence. The white walls of the Ghoul Detention Centre press in around Tooru's uncovered eye and the sound becomes a scent becomes a feeling – this is a crypt where sensation comes to die. It is a mausoleum of obsolete things.

Tooru stops in front of the door to the visiting room, Shirazu and Saiko behind him. For some reason, they are arranged in a straggled line by order of rank, like baby ducklings without a mother. Tooru shakes his head slightly at himself, and opens the door. Steps in.

He has an unobstructed view of Sasaki-san, sitting, waiting for them. His mentor smiles when he sees them, hesitant as a flower unfurling in winter. Tooru averts his gaze, blinking rapidly. He hugs his book bag closer to his chest.

'Mutsuki, Shirazu, Saiko,' he greets them individually by name. There is the soft _snick_ of the door closing behind Saiko. 'Hello.'

Shirazu bounds past Tooru, straight to one of the folding chairs placed directly in front of Sasaki-san. 'Sassan!' he yells through the glass, as if there aren't microphones linked to both sides, specifically to allow conversation. He is only half sitting, hands pressed to the transparent barrier. Sasaki-san looks a little surprised, but pleased. 'How are you? Are they treating you okay? You said our names, does that mean you still remember us?'

Sasaki-san holds his hands up in the air, a plea for amnesty. 'Whoa, whoa, Shirazu, slow down. Um, I've been well enough, and they're treating me fine, and,' he pauses here, sensing the significance of a question half asked, 'I remember you.' He covers his chin and mouth with his eyes downcast, as if suddenly self-conscious of the attention, of Shirazu's unfiltered affection. Shirazu's shoulders sag visibly with relief, and Sasaki-san smiles slightly, a ghost of a laugh passing through his lips.

He looks up, notices Tooru and Saiko still standing. 'Sit down, you two, make yourselves at home,' he says lightly, magnanimously. He makes a wide, flourishing gesture as if to say, _Welcome to my humble abode._

Tooru lets Saiko flop onto the other chair, petite shoes dangling, and carries over one from a number that are leaning against the side of the wall. As he sits, he feels the weight of the book bag in his lap, edges pressing against his thighs. 'Um,' he begins, hedging, and his voice is too high-pitched, 'We brought some things for you. Books.'

Is it Tooru's imagination, or has Sasaki-san's smile turned a little self-deprecating? Never mind. He sets the package onto the narrow table running alongside the glass.

'Thank you. I haven't had much to do lately.' There is a wink in his voice.

None of them laugh, although Tooru wishes he could. He feels a tremor in his hands, a cold, prickling sensation shifting in his bones. He clasps them tighter together, knuckles locking, palm against clammy palm.

'Are you alright, Mutsuki?'

Tooru looks up from double-clenched fists, eye startled a little too wide. 'Oh, I'm fine.' He thinks he can see Sasaki's teeth behind his lips, incisors tipped with blood. He imagines his gentle, concerned expression contorted into a rictus of madness, sadness, joy at the kill. Pain. He sees ribbons of red, unfurling in the air as if from dancers at a festival.

'Just fine.'


	3. Yonebayashi Saiko

**v.**

 **"vainglorious defenders"**

Saiko swings her legs as she sits with her hands tucked beneath her thighs. She is tired because she stayed up late the night before, gaming with her online friends until the shadows began to creep up on her. Or was it until they had stopped creeping, finally subsided and stayed put, like shadows were supposed to? Anyway, she is tired and wishes she is back at the Château, sleeping, rolled up in her blanket cocoon with snacks in easy reach. Where it's warm and cosy, not cold and bare like it is in Cochlea. Saiko feels sorry for Maman. She would hate it here if she were him.

She tries to convey that with her eyes (albeit heavy-lidded) as Mucchan and Maman chit-chat, with Shirazu interjecting occasionally. Mucchan holds books up to the glass so Maman can read the covers, and they exclaim a bit over them. Mucchan promises to hand the bag over to the prison warden to give to Maman, because there isn't a gap where he can slot the parcel through. Saiko doesn't get it; she doesn't get why anyone would be interested in thick, heavy tomes with lots of confusing kanji nobody even uses anymore, instead of light novels where things actually happen. Or visual novels, or sims, or RPGS... But then, anything is better than reality.

If reality is a story, then it's a really bad one created by sleep-deprived mangakas surviving on caffeine and bento boxes from convenience stores. Who were probably on crack at the time. And they may have finished the whole thing in seven days. It's got ink smudges in the corners and tragic scenes trying to be Maeda-Jun-tearjerkers but failing miserably. Its vulgar and oppressive and boring, boring, boring.

Saiko wishes she had something to occupy her hands and keep her busy, but she doesn't have anything with her today. Because last time, the first time they had tried to visit Sassan, she had her PSP with her. And the clear slot at the top of his cell door was way above her eye level. She had put it down (Mucchan's hands were full) so that she could cling to Shirazu while he boosted her up (he gave up after about twenty seconds). And then she had left it behind.

It was really bad, because Mucchan and Shiragin said they were in a hurry to get to something that she didn't care about. Shiragin was especially twitchy and nervous. They didn't want to go back inside. She didn't see why she should leave her beloved handheld behind in such a creepy place, and when she ran inside, they either didn't follow her or something stopped them.

In the now, Saiko watches her feet swinging, back and forth, back and forth. She had hunted down the stairs and corridors, gone in looping circles around the gallery levels, back the way they came. She scurried from wall to wall, like a professional assassin or a trained shinobi, a spy with specs so high that she was like a phantom. She imagined that she probably had a special title all to herself. It didn't matter that she technically had permission to be there; she was a ghoul investigator, and a Quinx. But she didn't want to be seen, and she didn't want someone to ask her if she needed help. Blegh. Gross.

But maybe that would've been better, because she got all the way back to Maman's cell where they all had had a peek to check in on him, and she saw her handheld lying in front of the door. A partially open door, and Saiko knew that that was a bad sign.

Saiko didn't usually ignore bad signs. Usually, she avoided doing things regardless of whether or not they were prefaced with bad signs. It was like a flag saying, 'Here be a traumatic experience.' Only, she could see her goal right in front of her, and she had expended so much energy to get here. She had practically taken _damage_ to get to this point; how could she walk away empty handed?

Bad sign, bad sign. She walked towards the cracked door on autopilot. It was like a dream, one of those dreams that everyone has, where their footsteps are as slow as if their feet are mired in mud. She wanted to turn back and run, but she couldn't. It was like accidentally dropping food and watching it fall in slow motion without being able to catch it. It was her high school experience, steamrolling past. It was a mother signing away her daughter's humanity without her consent.

She looked into the cell through the half-open door, craning her neck slightly. Maman was alone inside, and Saiko felt the bands constricting her chest relax. Her feet moved easily again.

'Maman?' she said, edging her way inside. She bumped the door by mistake in the process.

Maman's eyes snapped towards her, alive with ferocity and something else, something sharp and tender at the same time. His kakugan wasn't activated, but his gaze was so intense that Saiko shrank back with a little cry. She saw that the reason Maman hadn't turned his head was because he couldn't - sometime between when they had last seen the cell and where she was, then and there, they had wheeled in something like a hospital gurney and strapped him to it. Except, unlike a real hospital gurney, it didn't have a mattress and instead made up for it with a lot of straps that went all the way around, metal bands built into the hard surface, locks, clasps and hasps. It all congealed into a mess in Saiko's mind.

'Maman!' She ran to him, PSP forgotten. Red claws raked down her throat, hot tears spilled. Her nose got snotty in a matter of minutes. 'Maman.' She went to take one of his hands in her own, but some of his fingers were bent the wrong way. Mangled, twisted. She tried not to look too hard, but some of his nails seemed to be missing. She looked up at his face, horrified, and his eyes fluttered shut.

'Maman, don't die!'

''m not dying,' he mumbled. 'It's okay.'

There was blood all over. Saiko thought that ghouls didn't bleed unless you hit them with something really sharp, really hard, like a quinque or a kagune or a real, live Arima. But Maman was strong and brave; invincible. How could they hurt him? How could anyone hurt him?

'You should go,' he told her. He peered at her through slitted eyes, pupils like dark pools behind his lashes. He was scaring her. She was scared for him.

'But what about-'

'They'll be coming back soon.' Maman sort of sagged back onto the gruesome table, at least, as much as he was able to, breathing through his mouth. The sound was laboured, wheezing. Saiko focused on it instead of looking at him, his body bound in wounds, but in a way that was equally terrifying.

Footsteps in the hallway reached the periphery of Saiko's enhanced hearing, and a violent shiver wracked her frame. 'Why won't you fight back?' she wailed.

He replied in staccato bursts: 'Can't. Don't worry, it'll be fine. Don't want you to get hurt.'

Saiko's feet itched to run, to take her away from the danger. What could she do there? Nothing.

In the now, Saiko looks up from those feet, still swinging. Maman isn't exactly the picture of health, but he is smiling, and there's no blood, and he isn't being strapped down anymore. It's a little scary how much he seems to have recovered, but mostly, Saiko is just relieved. She wishes she is back at the Château, but she wishes they could take Maman back with them too. It sucks when there's no one home who can actually cook.

Maman behind the glass is almost like an illusion, a mirage, existing only in reflections. She doesn't think it's possible to pick up and carry one of those.

It had been difficult to hear clearly over the cacophony of her own heart, slamming against her ribcage, and the scuffing of her shoes on concrete as she stumbled away. But the last thing she thought she had heard him say was, 'Thank you.'


	4. Shirazu Ginshi

**iv.**

" **heretic"**

Ginshi dreams of cold flesh, the stink of urine and the creaking of a rope, all enveloped in darkness. He wonders what Sassan dreams of.

Are the dreams more vibrant, more vivid, in a place so stark as Cochlea? Or are they muffled and overcome by the dreamer's surroundings; does the mind become the same white slate as the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the sheets, the doctors in their lab coats?

Colour has vanished. There are fine lines and shadows, like tiny fissures heralding a splitting chasm, framing Sassan's usually lively eyes. He looks fine. He looks terrible.

What does Ginshi say to him, knowing what has been done to him?

* * *

 _Uriko said to them in a voice like cut paper, 'I'm not going.' His tone was bland, and each word was precise but flimsy in meaning; sharp. There was more that he did not say, which was shrouded in what he did say. Paper is only transparent when held up to the light._

 _Ginshi could have punched him again. He could have kicked him over the sofa. It could have degenerated into a wrestling match, with Tooru looking on and waving his hands helplessly at them to stop. Saiko would have cheered for him, probably._ _But it didn't. Part of Ginshi was disgusted that Urie could feel nothing for the mentor who had trained them, given them advice, risked his life for them, and generally looked after them like a foster parent for, what, more than a year? Part of Ginshi was furious that Urie's refusal might be to do with Sassan being half ghoul. Part of Ginshi could not care less about what was going in Urie's head, that he could feel or not feel whatever he wanted to and it would be none of Ginshi's business. Yet part of him also understood what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under you by someone that you trusted._

 _But in the end, Ginshi didn't know what any of that looked like on Uriko's side. And somewhere along the way, he had learned that using your fists didn't earn you that much anyway, except maybe a bit of catharsis. So he ground his teeth and stalked away._

 _In the morning, they left without him; Ginshi, Saiko and Tooru. They took public transport to get to the 23rd Ward, because there was no one to drive them and they had become suspicious of taxis. There was no one, now, who was ready to run after them and save them if they ran into trouble. Except maybe Urie, who wouldn't bother anyway._

 _At Cochlea, they forged through layers of security, brandishing their badges with Tooru at the front to say, 'Rank 1 Investigator Mutsuki!' It helped that he looked young and fresh as he did it; that he also looked innocent and untried, not so much. The leather eyepatch Sassan had given him added an edge of hardness, a hint of mystery. The guards waved them on like they were biting, flying insects interrupting their mid-morning breaks. Mutters of 'Quinx' and 'ghouls' trailed after them, but that was nothing new._

 _At the front desk of the main structure, a surly-faced attendant informed them that there was no such thing as "visiting hours." However, if they were investigators (this was followed by a disdainful up-down glance that Ginshi did not miss), then they were allowed to interrogate any prisoners for information pertaining to an investigation. Ginshi made something up about an extremely dangerous, A-rated ghoul who was as of yet unnamed, and who needed to be caught as soon as possible. When the attendant pulled up Sassan's details on his computer, he rolled his eyes. Ginshi was pretty sure he had made some sort of connection, but the attendant just gave them Sassan's cell number and said they could check in on him and chat through the bars or something. He snickered as they walked through the gates unlocked for them, without a guide._

 _They made Tooru take point again because he had done this sort of thing before. Any guards inside the spiralling gallery of prison cells only gave them a brief once-over, assuming that anyone who had made it in that far had permission to be there. Or maybe, the Quinx Squad had become a little more famous than they thought. Nevertheless, Tooru still gripped his badge tightly, ready to wave it like a flaming torch before a pack of wolves. In his other hand was a bag with a short stack of Sassan's favourite books, and a couple of personal effects_ _that_ _they thought he might need or want._

 _They found the cell a few levels down, and peeped before they knocked. Only, they didn't knock, because Sassan wasn't in there. Saiko accused Tooru and Ginshi of having bad eyesight as well as dull hearing and dead noses. She made Ginshi boost her up for way too long to ascertain that the cell was, indeed, unoccupied. As squad leader, Ginshi proposed that they all split up to look for him. Tooru seemed nervous enough to reject the idea, but worry for their mentor overcame it. Saiko was just nervous. They chose a direction each and agreed to meet up in front of Sassan's cell again in half an hour with any findings._

 _Ginshi chose to go deeper. As he went, he began to question his own thinking processes. Alone in a nest of captured ghouls? In unfamiliar territory? These were probably bitter predators-become-prey, who would not begrudge an easy kill to satisfy their own crushed egos. They probably thought cannibalism was cool._

 _Stuck in the sludge of his own thoughts, quickly dissolving into,_ What was I thinking, I'm such an idiot, I'm not good enough to be squad leader - _Ginshi wandered into a side corridor. He snapped back to the present scene when he heard, unmistakably, the sound of laughter._

 _The stuttering_ screech _of metal on metal rang against the walls, followed by a heavy_ smack _and a thick, slick tearing sound. It reminded him of the auction raid, when ghouls threw opponents into walls like rolls of flesh bagged in skin. The tearing was not unlike the typical noise that a typical kagune made, piercing through a human body. Sickness rose in the back Ginshi's throat. Was it his imagination, or could he hear blood spattering? He saw a delicate face smeared with blood and other fluids, flesh pulsing and convulsing around the blade of his Tsunagi. A voice; broken, whispering._

 _He rounded the corner to face reality and end the vision. What he saw made him jump right back. Sweat slicked his spine. Sassan was crouched in the middle of a tumultuous whirlwind, flurries of white cloth and shards of gleaming steel dancing around him. When he peered back around the corner, the shapes resolved themselves into panicked scientists and their assistants, some of them holding half-finished, experimental quinques and light firearms loaded with Q bullets. Metal working tables had been overturned, leaving grey rents on the already stained and scuffed floor._

 _'Hurry, get more RC suppressants!' one woman shouted._

 _'It won't work, we've already used so much-'_

 _When Ginshi finally gathered the courage to look again, he saw Sassan's eyes as gaping caverns. They were narrowed in concentration so intense, they appeared blank and empty of thought. It was as if his entire world had been reduced to physical movements within a five-metre radius; action and reaction, immediate threats with which to be dealt. Did Ginshi witness cornered prey, lashing out instinctively, or a predator going for the kill? His mentor's kagune morphed fluidly from shape to shape, surrounding him in a cage that was both defensive and offensive; red rope and ribbon became claws and swords at will._

 _Ginshi was rooted where he stood. If he showed himself, he had only two plausible options. One: take Sassan's side, help fight off the lab workers, fight their way back up and out of Cochlea, hopefully regroup with Saiko and Tooru, and run. Run where, he didn't know._

 _Two: take the lab workers' side, and help to restrain Sassan._

 _The first was as terrifying as a trapdoor opening beneath a gallows. They would effectively be making themselves enemies of the CCG, assuming they made it out of Cochlea at all. They would probably have to live in hiding for the rest of their lives. But the second option was repulsive to Ginshi, not to mention that the mere_ idea _of taking on Sassan as a real opponent made his stomach flip over and run away from him._

 _What to do?_

 _In the middle of another endless loop of_ useless, useless, useless, _Tooru appeared at the end of the side corridor. He paused, bent over with his hands on his knees, to catch his breath. He took one look at Ginshi's frozen expression and straightened up without speaking. He sidled over to Ginshi as quietly as possible._

 _'What is it?' he asked him, in a voice pitched low, with none of the sibilant sounds that made a whisper carry. It wouldn't have mattered anyway; it was aural pandemonium beyond their safe shadow behind the wall. Sassan's infrequent bursts of laughter were raucous and echoing, blanketing them with his madness, chilling them. His voice temporarily covered the twining sounds of clashing weaponry and the alarmed, thready cries of untrained combatants. It was only a matter of time until they called back-up. In fact, it may have already happened. Sassan was probably fighting another losing battle._

 _Ginshi said to Tooru, 'Is it possible to become immune to RC suppressants?'_

 _Tooru started, confusion clouding his visible eye. 'I don't think so. I've never heard of such a thing.'_

 _Ginshi stared at the floor. He was so anxious he felt like he could bite all the nails off his fingers, and the perspiration was beginning to run down his face. He heard an aborted shout beyond their hiding place, a sudden_ crash _louder than the rest. Clattering, tinkling sounds, like breaking glass, or surgical instruments tumbled from a tray. The sudden thundering of a dozen pairs of booted footsteps._

 _Tooru and Ginshi shared a stricken look. The same thought seemed to run through their minds. There must have been another entryway that they hadn't accounted for, one through which trained back-up had flooded into the room. They heard a furious scream which might have been Sassan's, the air-rending shriek of a thwarted demon, or the lamentation of an avenging angel. They couldn't believe Sassan hadn't finished them all off and escaped. But then, time ran strangely when it counted the most. Ginshi felt like he had been standing there forever, dithering and deliberating, uselessly. Tooru's fingers had found Ginshi's sleeve at some point, and now they tightened into a shaking fist._

 _Helpless. They were so helpless._

 _Tooru must have known it too, that to fight on Sassan's side now meant taking on the entirety of the CCG. Ginshi nearly broke and ran inside, but Tooru kept his death grip on his sleeve, transferring it to his arm to make it good and solid. He shook his head at him. The bitterness of regret, and the resolve born only from rationality, tightened his lips to whiteness._

 _If they didn't reveal themselves, they had one more plausible option, and that was to find Saiko and run. Pretend that they had never seen anything._

 _Ginshi wasn't sure if that option was the most repulsive to him of all._

 _The sounds beyond the hall had begun to die down. Muted voices were coloured with irritation, mingled with relief, and there was the cloth-muffled clanging of metal. Ginshi's stomach roiled when he thought he picked out a short strand of conversation:_

 _'Is that enough?'_

 _'I don't know, let me check.'_

 _And then a stifled yelp, as if from behind a gag. A gurgling sound like harsh, triumphant mirth. And then the click of an implement on a hard surface._

 _When Tooru gained the strength to drag him away, he didn't resist._

 _Ginshi didn't know about Tooru, but he walked with automaton limbs back to the entrance. Ten minutes or so later, Saiko appeared to berate them for not meeting her where they said they would meet. Ginshi wasn't sure how long she had waited, and how she had decided to come to the entrance instead. She said something too long-winded on a subject of comparatively little importance. The only thing Ginshi caught was something along the lines of going back into the frozen hellhole they had just left. That set his back teeth to chattering, and the sickness to well again. Tooru said something back to her, something about an appointment, which seemed sort of familiar, but otherwise floated right past Ginshi's perception. It was only when they were on a bus back to the main office that Ginshi surfaced a little from his daze, and noticed that Saiko was gone._

 _When Ginshi looked at Tooru to ask where she was, he saw in his eyes the same cold terror which had carved itself deeply, suppressed, into the marrow of his bones._

* * *

If Ginshi looks at Saiko hard enough, will the icy tendrils of that same fear show itself? What has she seen; what does she know?

What does Sassan know?

When they had come in for their second visit, Tooru demanded that they be allotted a proper interrogation room. The attendant had just smiled. Ginshi looks through the impenetrable glass at his mentor's unreadable expression, and the fragile masks that they all wear.

Who is the betrayer, and who is the betrayed?


	5. Urie Kuki

**iii.**

" **coup de (scape)grâce"**

Kuki waits on his side of the glass, fingers tapping idly in time to his music. He stares straight ahead, eyes blank and lidded. If he is nervous or excited in any way, he gives no indication.

Sasaki appears on the other side of the glass, duly restrained. He looks like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Perhaps he has always looked that way to Kuki. When his strangely-coloured hair had started to grow in black at the roots, it was like the guard hairs of his furry hide were showing through sparse white wool. Kuki had always known that something lean and predatory lurked behind his innocuous white smile, and his snowy white investigator's coat. And now the rest of the world does too.

'Urie,' his superior says, and the greeting is nearly a rebuke. (But Sasaki is not his superior anymore. He is just a prisoner, and a ghoul with no rights. Kuki has to remind himself of that, not that it was a fact that had been all that relevant to him to begin with.) 'I didn't expect to see you.'

Kuki lets the moment stretch and dangle, then removes his headphones before it snaps. 'I didn't expect to see you either. (I really didn't want to see you.)' The words are devoid of inflection, so it's difficult to tell whether he's being sarcastic or not. Good: Kuki thrives off of the effect of his enigmatic exterior.

Sasaki tips his head to that as if he understands and Kuki feels his upper lip lift slightly in a sneer. He obviously didn't plan to be here. He had meant it when he had told Shirazu, that idiot, 'I'm not going. (Are you fucking kidding me?)' But today the paints refused to mix properly, and his brush sat awkwardly in his grip. An emotion like a Stygian black tangle had begun to form inside him, insisting on his attention. He had picked restlessly at it like it was a half-healed scab. He wanted it to bleed. He wanted the pressure to go away.

'You look like shit,' he says bluntly. (And he does. The wolf has been caught in a net of whip-thin cord and thrown into a cage as small as it is bare. The mighty hunter brought down. There is no longer any need to censure himself. Surely.)

'Well,' says Sasaki, and there it is, that sheepish smile, the one that says he is naive, and good-natured, and not dangerous at all. When he looks at Kuki, his grey eyes are flat. 'That's to be expected. How are you, Urie?'

'Fine. (I didn't come here to make small talk.)'

But then, what had he come here for?

'And the others?'

'The same. (How should I know?)'

Sasaki's innocence is a pitiful thing, stained and strained by his madness and his strength. And something else, too, something he can only describe as a weighty and sinful influence. This is something that Kuki knows to the bone, to the cold white space between the back of his skull and the top of his spine, where the sadness sometimes solidifies. Deep inside and far away from prying eyes. Nevertheless, it shows itself sometimes, in a hardened gaze, or in the colours mixing on his palette. Muddied ground after a sudden shower.

Does he show it now? (What else did he come here for?) Sasaki doesn't speak as Kuki stares at a spot on the wall behind the ghoul's head, deliberating. Because it's true; regardless of the ridiculous mummery the CCG had attempted to play out, Sasaki is a ghoul. Sasaki is the ghoul that was called Centipede, who had disrupted the Owl Suppression Operation two years ago. If Centipede hadn't appeared, Arima would have returned to deal with the One-Eyed Owl earlier. If Centipede hadn't appeared, the power balance wouldn't have tipped. If Centipede hadn't appeared...

'You're strong, aren't you? Why don't you break out of here? (Why can't you fuck off already if you're not going to die?)'

Sasaki's expression is hard to read. Kuki starts to tap his foot out of boredom when he doesn't get an answer.

'I'm not that strong,' he says, and it's a staid line that sounds practiced, rehearsed. 'And it's not that easy to break out of Cochlea.'

'… (Don't try to be modest.)'

(Because he had seen the deadly precision with which Sasaki had wielded both kagune and quinque. He had seen the white-lipped fear on the faces of the investigators tasked with his capture, now that memories of bloodshed and brutality had been returned to him. The battle experience of one who survived only through killing. And he remembers envy so sharp and pure that it was like a shard of broken bottle-glass had been wedged between his ribs, puncturing his lungs. Kuki had been the top of his class at the CCG Academy, both scholarly and athletically. Yet, at his age, Sasaki had already been classified an SS-rate ghoul, deemed lethal to any investigator below Special Class. What has he done, what has he not done? The world is not fair, life is not fair, and that is something that Kuki knows too. Or does he?)

'…I've always hated you,' he breathes, softer than a whisper.

Sasaki is the one staring at the wall this time. Kuki wants to get a rise out of him, and he is not sure why. Did he not hear him? Is he deaf now?

(Sasaki was and is, clearly, unstable. Kuki hadn't witnessed the exact event that triggered his breakdown and awakening, but he had been party to the wretched spectacle that had followed. An interminable period of time was filled with screaming, laughing and sobbing. Sometimes the sounds were interchangeable, and sometimes each one was indiscernible from the others. When Squad 1 arrived, they had been unable to approach him due to the number of kagune tentacles he had produced, lashing angrily at the air. A summer storm, inflicted with hot winds bearing burning embers.

Arima was dispatched, of course. Sasaki's gabbling reached an unbearably high-pitch, but Kuki couldn't make out the words. They had constructed a barricade and forced all investigators under the rank of First Class behind it. Overkill, he had thought. An altercation occurred. Kuki heard scuffling, furious outbursts. It was hell on earth, but nothing he couldn't handle.)

Sasaki speaks up, peering at Kuki through the strands of hair that fall over his eyes, 'You're a good investigator.'

Kuki looks at him and sees the map of his countless injuries, like the roots of some poisonous plant, spreading throughout his body. He sees the snake-strike of his kagune, the deceptive white of his bared teeth. He says, 'I don't believe you. (What would you know about being a good investigator? Damned ghoul.)'

And, '... (Don't lie, it doesn't suit you.)'

(It was over quickly once Arima arrived. To his shock, he had not slaughtered Sasaki like the inhuman beast he was, like the monster he had given himself away to be. Muttering rose in the ranks and was quieted just as quickly; Arima had a plausible excuse ready. Besides, one did not question the invincible face of the CCG, the undefeated shinigami graced with bloody white wings and an equally bloody scythe.)

Kuki had long ago discovered that Director Washuu's order to Sasaki had been, 'Raise an investigator who can surpass Arima Kishou.' But Special Class Arima is a one-of-a-kind irregularity, and as long as Sasaki himself exists, there is a glass ceiling to break. Overkill. Annoying.

He wants to say, 'I hope they kill you soon,' but Kuki is not given to displays of emotion. He is not so savage. He is better than that. (He is worse than that.)

The world is unfair; life is unfair. Kuki _knows_ that he knows that, just as well as he knows the falsity of Sasaki's torn innocence. But still the glass shards, broken-bottle-sharp and sickly green, collide in conflict, producing sparks. He will burn himself up with impotent rage and infinite sorrow. It's not fair. He doesn't deserve this. He deserves better. (He deserves worse.)

The metal legs of his folding chair scrape along the concrete as he gets up to leave. He strides towards the door without so much as a, _Have a nice death._

'Take care, Urie,' says Sasaki, and Kuki doesn't know if it's sarcasm or not.

He really has always hated Sasaki.


	6. Arima Kishou

**ii.**

 **"the graven image, the golden calf"**

[PRESENT DAY]:

Kishou arrives at the Ghoul Detention Centre of the 23rd Ward early in the morning, where the warden unlocks an interrogation room more hospitable than most. A glass wall still cleaves the room in two, but the chairs are permanent and substantial, not flimsy, folding-metal affairs. Although it is air-conditioned, the room lacks the dryness and sterility that permeates the rest of the Centre. The smell of trapped bodies, chemical substances, and coagulating dust seethes beneath currents of cool air.

Kishou gazes into space, hands empty, as Haise is led into the room. He has brought no books with him. He suspects that the warden is more solicitous of the prisoner considering present company. He has no evidence of comparison for the hypothesis, so he abandons it. He turns his attention to Haise instead, who looks neither well nor unwell, but simply numb.

He had never meant to trap him inside a glass slide with just a bit of plastic and a drop of water. He never meant to corner him under the glare of a microscopic lens, like a non-sentient specimen to be examined. But Kishou has always had a healthy sense of curiosity, and nevertheless Haise is there now, and Kishou must consider how he is best able put him out of his misery. He is not sure whether this comes from a peripheral desire to be humane, a hidden well of sympathy, or some cruel parody of parental affection. Does a part of him resonate, empathise, with the one person in the world who could be considered as his 'son'?

'I have heard,' he begins, tonelessly and without prelude, 'that you are becoming immune to RC suppressants.'

Haise remains still when he speaks. He is so still in his seat, it is as if he has folded his being into a small packet and tucked it deep within his body. Kishou has decided to refer to him as Haise in his mind for convenience, because he has no confirmation as to who or what Haise currently identifies as. Anyway, nothing of either _Sasaki Haise_ or _Kaneki Ken_ shows outside of the prisoner's mind. Visually dissecting him is futile, and Kishou cannot determine which he is; if he is either, neither, or both.

'I have been told,' he continues, 'that RC suppressants are not an unlimited resource.'

Again, silence. He observes him carefully as he forms each word, depositing parcels of sound and meaning into the space between them, with the lightest puffs of air and dust. What he observes is this: Haise is a statue. Some prodigious sculptor must have carved the individual strands of his hair from cold marble, shadowing his eyes. Not a breath stirs. Yet he is a living entity, an organism with warm blood running in his veins, pumped by a beating heart. A living, breathing, bleeding organism that thinks for itself. However strange and cruel his biological construct. Kishou considers that since this organism fell into his hands, he has maintained it and displayed it like a statue in a museum, cordoned off with red rope. _View the miraculous half-breed. Don't forget the fee. He performs the most wonderful tricks._ Oh. Or is it a circus? He turns the thought over and over in his mind as silence pools around them like water. Is this a thing he has done with premeditation and conscious decision? He has certainly not let Haise's potential go to waste.

Has he weaponised him? (Has he weaponised himself?) Has he done this all against Haise's will? But then, he has no concrete evidence of what Haise's will actually is.

In Kafka's _Crossbreed,_ there is a small animal that the narrator owns. It is a cross between a lamb and a kitten. And sometimes, the animal looks at the narrator with something approaching human understanding. And they share a certain thought. Perhaps it is the only one that they share.

'I have been told,' he repeats, 'that your doses must be increased to be effective. And that this solution is only temporary.'

He breathes. He rushes forward.

'I have been asked to make a decision.'

The narrator considers that perhaps the butcher's knife is the only release for the animal's solitary existence. Is the human understanding reflected in the animal's eyes a product of the narrator's imagination? Is a connection made; is a message delivered? Or has the narrator projected his own thoughts and feelings upon the animal?

Are there fathers who impress too heavily upon their sons? Ideals, hopes, dreams. Unachievable paradigms. The future is a concept that does not exist, physically, in the now. But however much of an anomaly Haise is, they still share the communication mode of speech. They are speaking to each other, or at least, they have spoken to one another, in the same language. Perhaps they are like people from opposite ends of the same country, and the variations between their regional dialects are so minuscule as to be unnoticeable. Yet those tiny flaws belie the yawning chasm beneath the surface.

Have they come from such distant places that it is impossible to understand one another?

But there is no such thing as fully understanding another human being in the first place, let alone a ghoul. Let alone an artificial crossbreed of the two. And Kafka's animal identified with neither sheep nor cats. It simply existed, alone.

'I have been asked to choose between harvesting your kakuhou for a quinque, or disposing of you,' Kishou says, finally. He does not know how to mince words. He says, 'It has been deemed too dangerous for your kakuhou to be retained for use in the Quinx procedure.'

Haise moves. He is a bear coming out of hibernation, each muscle waking slowly. Plates of the earth, drifting, colliding. The disparate pieces of him come together minutely, until they form a whole. Haise lifts his head, but the motion is hesitant and slightly disjointed. Despite this, he meets Kishou's eyes smoothly and with precision. His gaze pierces through the glass of the barrier and of his prescription lenses. Unerring.

'Arima-san,' he says, forming the words clearly. 'What exactly am I to you?'

* * *

[2 WEEKS AGO]:

Kishou is always busy. He doesn't know what it's like to have free time. It's only natural that he is elsewhere at the time of the Tsukiyama Operation, running between wards and assignments, cleaning up messes too big for anyone else to handle. It's only natural that when all the threads have come together in alignment, and Haise inevitably loses his grip, he is called in.

He is briefed through an earbud as he makes his way to the Lunatic Eclipse building. The Operation had been on the verge of being neatly tied up when two prominent Aogiri members, and another, external group, appeared and spread panic through the ground troops. What had previously been a simple battle, with a clear line drawn down the middle between two armies, turned into a chaotic maelstrom of various conflicting factions. And in the middle of it, they had an investigator who was also a ghoul, capable of switching sides at any minute. A traitor by his genetic make-up.

He carries Narukami in one hand and a nameless replacement for Ixa in the other as he gets out of his taxi. Pays the fare, thanks the driver. Roads have been blocked in the surrounding areas in anticipation of the violence that comes with a large scale operation. So, he goes on foot.

A sensation like déjà vu knocks, with timid taps, on the back door of his mind. But Kishou doesn't indulge in useless trains of thought, and neither does he waffle in unresolvable emotions. He is busy. He doesn't have time for nostalgia and pointless musings. It's a very simple concept. He ignores the knocking.

When he reaches the building, the main conflict appears to be taking place on the roof. Electricity hasn't been cut off, as the automatic doors slide open for him. His arbitrary thought is: _Good. I can take the elevator._ Of course, for anyone else to take the elevator, it would be a tactical disadvantage. But whatever tries to trap Kishou in a confined space will be the one that can't escape. Besides, the scene matches the report he's received perfectly. Dismembered bodies litter the ground floor, like fallen wheat heads in the path of a farmer's scythe. _Hairu's work,_ he observes. A deserted battlefield, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Standing in the elevator, watching the dial arc lazily towards the highest floor, Kishou finds himself drifting off. He wakes when the elevator _dings,_ doors sliding open to the top floor. He finds an emergency stairway not too far away, casually kicks open the door, and ascends to the rooftop.

He is not sure what he had been expecting, but it was probably not this.

He arrives in a moment of stillness, frozen as if in a photograph or a snow globe. Squad 1 is arrayed in loose formation before the door to the rooftop, weapons poised. Beyond them is Haise, his back to all of them. Kishou can't tell if his crouching posture over the fallen Tsukiyama heir is defensive or threatening. He faces what Kishou surmises is the unknown, external group, made up of three. He catalogues them quickly. Two are well hooded and cloaked, with only their silhouettes clearly discernible. One is tall and broad-shouldered, the other much slighter. The third stands with his hood thrown back, but the moonlight bleaches his hair so that Kishou can't tell what colour it is. In the far right corner, a diminutive figure perches on the railing with their chin propped in their hands. They swing bandaged legs cheerily to and fro, as unconcerned as a spectator at a slow-moving ball game. Aogiri.

A faint tremor runs the length of Haise's body. The meagre light that sweeps over them changes subtly, with the inexorable movement of tattered clouds across the night sky. A breath of wind stirs hair and clothes. And just like that, the still tableau erupts.

Berserker. Battle madness; battle-fury. The killing rage. Fine words for a base and violent reaction, as Haise discards every single scrap of control that Kishou has ever taught him to hold onto. Squad 1 holds their ground. The face of the one, un-hooded outsider is stark with terror, horror, grief. The muscled one yanks him back from the reach of Haise's kagune, and the action shifts the hood that had thrown his face into shadow. Kishou files away a brief glimpse of Amon Koutarou's grim, but still-living countenance. Behind him, the door flies open and Urie Kuki, ever-ambitious, stumbles in on the scene. How he has detached himself from the rest of his squad, Kishou doesn't know.

'Koori,' he says, and Koori turns, quinque still raised. 'Secure the rooftop. Set up a barricade. No one below First Class.'

'And the others?' His eyes flicker to Amon's group.

'I'll take care of it,' he assures him. Squad 1 melts furtively into the background, dispersing to the lower floors and the edges of the rooftop. Someone drags a reluctant Urie, hackles raised, back the way he came.

Kishou may have been busy, but he has not been standing in an underground chamber, intercepting a flood of fleeing ghouls. He deems back-up unnecessary.

In the chaos, the Aogiri member has vanished, smoke-like. He doesn't doubt that they have hidden somewhere to observe, and that a high-ranked Aogiri ghoul is prey for another time.

And Haise is screaming.

Haise has been screaming for a long time now.

At some point, he has come to his feet. He staggers backwards, then forwards. He looks as if he is torn between myriad actions, unsure what to do first, or what he should do at all. One hand is clapped to to the side of his head, fingers raking through hair, as if he is trying to prevent his brain from spilling out of a head wound. Yukimura 1/3 is still clutched in his other hand; his grip is too tight, but he still holds it like he intends to wield it. And the words and worlds that spill from his mouth are a dark litany that Kishou remembers well.

He goes for the eyes, again.

Haise stops screaming.

* * *

[PRESENT DAY]:

Kishou hears the ticking of a second-hand from a clock that isn't in the room. The passage of time, etching itself into the air and in his mind.

He says, 'You make the choice.

'It matters little to me whether you live or die.'


	7. Unknown

**i.**

 **"beloved"**

In the beginning, there is nothing. There is no silence. There is no whiteness. There is not even a "there" in which to exist, or to be absent from.

Only nothing, and nothingness.

* * *

Akira is the first to visit him, on the day that the bandages come off.

He awakens atop a gurney in a cold, cold room. He is wearing a thin hospital robe that fails to keep any warmth in. He can feel the chill metal of the table he is lying on, seeping through a thin mattress pallet. He is not strapped down, yet.

A young woman, one of the medical or scientific assistants, helps him into a sitting position to cut the bandages away. Her movements are neither rough nor gentle, but he sees a moment when her control slips, and her fingers tremble. Gauze and cloth strips fall away easily, dry and unbloodied. He holds his hands up to his face, first covering the eye that had been injured, and then the eye that had not been. He sees no discernible difference. One of these days, Arima-san is actually going to destroy his vision. Or he may not.

The assistant steps away, purposeful but somewhat hurried. She hands him a straitjacket, but there are no curtains to pull around his makeshift hospital room. She fixes her gaze to a point in the distance, a light flush colouring her cheeks. She doesn't turn around. He tries not to think too hard on the irony of shackling himself as he strips quickly in the cool air and slips into the manacles. When he is dressed, she pulls the overlong sleeves around him snugly, and tightens the buckles.

She calls in another member of staff, who leads him to the interrogation room. He sits down across from Akira and tries not to stare.

Her appearance is as immaculate as ever. Sleek braids gleam under the fluorescent light, and her skirt suit is pressed and pristine. Her make-up is flawless, minimal and flattering. If her nose and the area under her eyes are particularly well-powdered, he makes no comment.

He knows that the question he asks is cruel. He can almost see the tiny blood vessels, just beneath the skin, that have ruptured because of stress or crying. But she is marble, and he is proud. Then she shouts at him for a while, true things, things he can't dispute.

Certainly, he was the one who killed Amon Koutarou. He remembers the blood that ran in rivulets over his hands, drying in the creases of his palms. He remembers the sickening sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bone. He remembers the guilt that drowned him, then and now. But, 'No,' he says, and her fierce flame eyes pin the blame to him. Hammering the nails in his coffin lid, like the nails on a crucifix. He nearly welcomes it. It is twisted affirmation of the worst kind, but he expects it. He needs it. Who is blaming who?

His eyes feel hollow. His bones are hollow. If he is not anchored, he will float away and dissipate into the stratosphere. Tied with his arms crossed over his torso, it is almost like he is hugging himself. But he doesn't have enough weight or strength to hold the pieces of himself together. He only wants to be held.

He remembers being huddled in the corner of a small and cramped space, with blood on the black-and-white tiles, and not enough room, not enough warmth, not enough feeling. Never enough of anything. (Except maybe pain, but there had never been enough of that to kill him, and that's the only thing that matters about pain.) His knees drawn up to his chin, arms around his knees. Shaking. It was all his fault and who would willingly put their hands on a mad dog, anyway. A ragged, mindless, bloody thing; flea-ridden and grotesque. He wouldn't. So he huddled into himself, and he rocked, and then he was nothing.

* * *

It was warm, and he was safe. Most nights his mother worked late, and the light from the living room seeped in through the cracks around his bedroom door. He knew she wanted him to get enough sleep, so he wouldn't be tired, and so he could pay attention in school, and maybe make something of himself. So he would burrow down under his futon, and fall asleep with the faint yellow light warm on his eyelids.

* * *

His cell is a white cube. It is perhaps three paces wide and four paces length-wise. There is one door, set to the side of the front wall with a narrow slot towards the top. It is filled with small bars. There are no windows.

There is a sleeping platform built against the wall, a solid slab of concrete with a somewhat threadbare futon thrown on top of it. There is a small sink opposite, similarly protruding from the wall. There is nothing to be culled from the minimal furniture, no danger of escape. He knows that some of the materials used to make quinque steel are mixed into the fixtures of the cell, reinforcing thick walls. He supposes that there is no danger of a ghoul attempting to hang themselves, either.

He thinks that the cell is surprisingly humane, considering that ghouls have no rights at all. If he hadn't been in Cochlea before, as an investigator instead of a prisoner, he would have expected to be thrown in some modern-day version of a dank, medieval dungeon. Deprived of light and fresh air, and starved to death for his crimes in a nest of dirty straw.

Not that he has any fresh air. The level he is on is underground, and the sterile stench of captivity has no place to circulate. He is not sure if he should be flattered that the CCG considers him to be this much of a threat.

Most days, he gets up, folds up the futon, and straightens his clothes. He washes his face and brushes his teeth. He doesn't bother finger-combing his hair because there is no mirror and no one to see him. Like a death-row prisoner, he doesn't get to leave his cell for exercise. Once or twice, he has a nightmare that jumbles his mind, and he wakes up in places he doesn't expect to be. He stitches the pieces back together as best as he can, and sweeps the mess under a white rug over a white floor. He is tired after the nightmares, but he remembers that that's usually the case. Fragments of his night terrors coalesce as memories of battle, the fight-or-flight instinct that characterises sleep-paralysis, and an image of Saiko with tears blurring her eyes. Saiko? Why would he dream specifically of Saiko?

Some days, he doesn't get up. He stares at the ceiling of the white cube, stray thoughts rattling around the empty, clean bowl of his mind. He thinks that Gregor Samsa's room was bigger than this, and that he had a couch to hide under too. On the hollow days, he doesn't need to even think of climbing the walls and ceiling for amusement; his mind scuttles around all over them for him. Ricocheting off the blank walls and shaking his cell door. Other days he does push-ups and crunches and other small exercises like he expects to be let out, some day. He is not sure why he bothers.

His sense of time is stilted from the lack of daylight and the fact that ghouls don't need or get three meals a day. A couple of sleeps after Akira visits, the warden comes to his cell to cuff him and tell him that he has "visitors." His tone is caught between disdain and a leer, and the quotation marks are audible. He lets himself be cuffed and goes quietly. He does not think of resistance.

He gets to the room before them, and sits there with the voices clamouring in his head. Anticipation and dread churn in his empty stomach, and he forces them back down under a veneer of calm. He is still alive, and he has not lost everything. There are still things that he needs to protect.

His squad troops in through the open door, minus one Urie Kuki. Of course. 'Mutsuki, Shirazu, Saiko. Hello.' Part of him supplies the names; part of him uses them impartially, dispassionately. There is a schism in his mind that the stitches can't hold together. Abruptly, he is flooded with tangible and disparate emotions.

They are so young it frightens him. They are painfully naive, occasionally troublesome, and unendingly, unbearably precious. He does not know what to do with them. He does not know how to respond to them. A part of him cowers, looking for a dark corner to hide in, away from the light and the people that dwell there. If he excludes himself before he is seen, he will not be rejected. Sunlight is a thing as merciless and revealing as it is comforting and life-giving. But it is better to be content knowing that a thing exists, than to approach it and be denied. To confront it and lose it forever.

So he smiles, and he locks down the voices and the tremors, and he makes small talk. He lowers his guard, a little.

But there are masks that he cannot - must not - discard. And there are masks that they hold too, like flimsy lace constructions on beribboned handles at a masquerade. They bob and bow around one another, hobbled by etiquette and courtesy. The masks are not permanent, not obtrusive. But nonetheless they are there, veiling harsh truths. Waved about, they are distracting, but that is all. They will not hide anything on close inspection.

But they are each of them protecting something precious to them, and no one is looking too closely at anyone else. In guarding their own secrets, they shield those around them. Whether they hide those secrets from themselves or not.

According to what they tell him, Akira visited a week after the incident during the end of the Tsukiyama Extermination Operation. After they leave, and he has been boxed in again, he prods at this fact uneasily, looking for improbable gaps. The first time something like this had happened, he had spent months in convalescence. Somehow, he had healed in a mere week. He feels that it's something more than his fractured sense of time. The thought is too disturbing to hold onto, so he lets go of it.

* * *

Later, when oblivion recedes as foaming waves from a sandy shore, he gathers the wreckage of his thoughts.

There are two ways to think of "nothingness." One is simply the absence of something else. A hole in the wall exists because the wall does, and the absence of a brick where a brick should be is "nothing." The other is the idea that "nothingness" itself constitutes a substance. An existence of its own, independent of the existence of something else. A "nothing" which is material. A "nothing" which swallows up "somethings." A vacuum or a void.

That is what he is. Or perhaps, what he is being consumed by. He is both, or he is neither. In any case, he is nothing but an empty vessel for a thing which no longer exists. Is he Ken, or is he Haise? Perhaps he is both, and perhaps he is neither.

* * *

The day that Urie visits is a hollow day.

He faces a lone wolf cub, baring sharp, brittle puppy teeth at him from the other side of the glass. There is little inside him to respond; when he met with the other Quinx there was enough to fill a library full of books, only he had too much awareness to show it. Today there is neither a gallery of voices in his mind, nor enough consciousness to either smother them or relay the bleeding words that they speak. So he says the most inane things, but his mind is not elsewhere because he is not sure he currently has a mind at all.

He feels a very faint spark of what might be regret, but it smoulders too much. Regret is ash-like; it doesn't burn with any kind of warmth. He feels a vague and shifting unease, as if he has suddenly viewed a familiar concept from a totally different vantage point. He imagines it's not unlike the feeling of seeing a doppelgänger, of seeing your own face outside of a mirror. He does not know where it comes from.

He thinks he hears the distant sound of rain. It's strange because the room he is in, and the rooms he has been in have always been insulated completely from the outside world. It sounds like heavy rain, a relentless downpour, the kind that washes all traces of yesterday down street gutters.

When he says, 'You're a good investigator,' he thinks he means it.

He wants to say, 'I'm sorry,' but he is not sure what for, so he doesn't.

* * *

He remembers the first time he met Juuzou, and the other investigator had pressed a couple thousand-yen bills into his hand and thanked him cheerily. He had been so confused at the time. Now he laughs so hard that the warden bangs on his cell door, telling him to be quiet, but he can't stop.

He has never felt so much like monstrous vermin.

He remembers everything.

* * *

That night, the wind had tugged at his hair and clothes, while his mind stood still with shock.

He had defeated the Tsukiyama heir and was crouched looking down at him. A soft sweep of hair the colour of dusk shaded his deep-set eyes. The line of his nose was aquiline, the line of his cheekbones and jaw sharp and clean. The harmony of his features was not disrupted by the scrapes and bruises that the bearer had been dealt. He thought that he looked like a model. He remembered the pang of something between guilt and regret when he saw him slumped in a wheelchair, thin as bone and dry as a wilting flower. Ruined. Breakable as glass.

Yukimura 1/3 was an extension of himself, as much as his kagune was. It remained unwavering, the point poised at his opponent's long, white throat. It flexed with pain and choking gasps, and strained black humour that stabbed at him. But there was a splitting pain behind his eyes, backed by a shrieking cacophony of voices with no distinguishable source. The voice of the _other him_ threaded through it with a desperate mantra: _Don't kill him. Don't kill him. Don't kill him._

Pain. Confusion. He was surrounded. He had nowhere to run.

 _Don't kill him._

When he closed his eyes, blinking, he saw the imprint of a figure. It was so bright that his retinas retained the memory in gold tracery. The _other him_ was present like he never had been before, following the outline with his mind's eye lovingly, carefully. A wide, beaming smile framed with careless spikes of bleached-blond hair.

The figure was the sun, and if he looked at him too long, he would surely lose his vision and remain stuck forever with just that fleeting impression. A lingering sensation of warmth, belonging, and acceptance; all the more powerful for that the memory was second-hand.

But he opened his eyes, kept them open, and the figure was still there. Material, not memory. The cacophony intensified before it subsided to a low rumble at the base of his skull. His cheekbones were sharper, all childish roundness pared away. His hair was long enough to tie into a short, bobbing ponytail, and his mind snagged on that detail for a ridiculously long time, thinking on how endearing it was. Hide was smiling. And then he was not.

 _Oh god, oh god, oh god._

The sweet taste of blood in the back of his mouth, coating his teeth and tongue. The fear, the self-censure, the muggy determination as he stumbled through deserted streets to the duty he felt he could not shake off. Hide's face was angular but not malnourished. He looked fine; he even looked happy to see him, hollow man that he was. Stuffed straw man that he was. But he knew with a sudden and sickening certainty that there would be warped and sunken scars on his arms, and his sides, and the juncture where his neck met his shoulder, where the beast had gouged his flesh out. Warm, tender flesh giving way to sharp rows of teeth, filling the emptiness inside. Hot blood running down his throat. There was the murmur of a soothing voice in the background, fingers sifting through wispy hair, petting him.

Someone was screaming. It was noisy enough inside his own head. He wished that they would stop.

 _What a way to remember that you were human._

One of the hooded figures pulled Hide back, and he thought he was grateful enough to cry. Maybe he _was_ crying. Then he saw the face of the dead man inside the shadowed cowl, and he knew that he was the one who was screaming. No wonder Hide was terrified of him.

 _He wasn't human, he was a ghoul._

He fought, in an abstract fashion. It hurt, but that was fine. It was a relief when Death finally winged him away, to a place with neither sea nor sky, nor any place to stand. Nevertheless, he drowned, and it was peaceful.

* * *

Hunger is a thief; it steals from him in the dark of night, and it has boldly stolen from him in broad daylight.

Hunger has robbed him of his peace of mind, his sanity, his control, his confidence and his self-esteem, his humanity, his human connections. It is lean, but it is greedy. It tucks itself up tight in the hollow of his ribcage, in the concave of his being. Until it strips the lining from his stomach and the enamel from his teeth, bitter as broken trust.

Sometimes it is quiet, when it is sated. But it will never truly be full, never truly be satisfied. It is a bottomless thing.

Theft comprises all crime. Naturally, it follows that he is both victim and perpetrator.

* * *

 _Difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem:_ _  
_ _Nec possum tecum vivere nec sine te._

* * *

One morning, he wakes up and he is Haise, through and through. As if he had been born Sasaki Haise and lived as him all his life. The fragments of _his_ memories linger at the edges of his consciousness, but at his core he is Haise. Whoever Haise is supposed to be.

Haise knows fear better than hunger. He does not know if this is a blessing or a curse. His identity is a thing formed around his relationship with fear. It is born of white walls and scratchy sheets, and the smell of disinfectant that is the trademark of all hospitals. His bare cell is as familiar to him as the interior of his own skull.

He feels pity for mad men in asylums. Is there anything more terrifying than being told that you are insane? That the reality you inhabit is one you inhabit alone, that the truths that define you are less substantial than the smoke from a burnt-out match? Haise is real because he feels that he is real. At least, that is what he tells himself.

Fueguchi Hinami, Yotsume, the girl that _he_ had asked him to save – her quiet words had reinforced the flimsy paper walls that limited his individual awareness: 'You are not an empty vessel.'

 _We cannot coexist,_ Kaneki had told him.

Humans can't seem to coexist with ghouls either. Is his entire life an offshoot of the buried myth that is _Kaneki Ken?_ That icon of madness and strength, and the bridge between ghouls and humans that never would be. Is he a counterfeit, a construction substituting for the amnesiac Centipede? How far must they run to be safe, from others, from each other?

He feels that they have been running for a long time. Sulkily, the _other him_ snaps his book shut and tells him not to run, then.

As if in response to this, his door is unlocked from the outside, apparently tempting him to attempt escape. The warden tells him crisply, 'Special Class Arima is waiting for you,' and then man-handles him courteously to a new interrogation room.

Arima-san.

He cannot speak to him, even though the concept that the investigator had helped to create currently dominates his consciousness. He has become as brittle as thin ice, and if he moves he will crack.

The quiet words that Arima-san speaks make little sense to him. How is it possible to become immune to RC suppressants? He remembers thrashing against straps fastened too tight, and laughing hysterically because they kept breaking their silly little scalpels against the armour that was his skin. But of course, they were able to reach a high enough dose, eventually. _Needles in his eyes._ Hastily, he pushes the hazy memory down.

Arima-san stalls for longer than he expects him to. The fluorescent light reflects off his glasses from time to time, hiding his eyes and making it difficult for Haise to read his expression. He is not entirely sure what Arima-san is even trying to say.

His injuries had healed in a week. His diet then was probably better than his diet now. At least, he thinks his body would have been more resilient. There is only one real explanation, and so Haise asks the obvious question.

Naturally, Arima-san doesn't reply to it.

When you define a thing, you limit it. It was the question he had to ask, but it was a question which was nearly impossible to answer, no matter who asked it and who was expected to respond. From what Arima-san says next, though, he thinks he can understand.

(This is as far as we can go. This is the last and only choice that I can give you.)

It's enough, from the only father he has ever known.

* * *

'You are yourself,' she had told him. She put her arms around him. He was taller than her, but she managed to cradle his head against hers, her hand comforting on the back of his neck. No one could see the tears from this angle. For a while, it was safe, and it was warm. It wasn't okay, but he felt somehow that maybe it could be, eventually.

She asserted to him quietly, 'Names are just names,' and he cried himself empty to the unconditional love in her voice.

* * *

Classical Greek tragedies typically concern the destruction of the main character, especially through death. Primarily, there are two ways that this is achieved; internally, or externally.

A protagonist can be brought down by something or someone - or some other situation - outside of themselves. The protagonist remains pure and pristine. The tragedy is in the destruction of such a one; the robbing of the world of a golden figure, the sullying of an innocent soul.

A protagonist can be brought down by an inherent flaw. Hubris, for one. Adultery, for another. Is the tragedy of such a one the tragedy of self-destruction? It has been said that the concept of fate dampens the effect of tragedy. Fate adds meaning and inevitability to calamity; to remove fate is to suggest an event could have been avoided. If an event could have been avoided, the tragedy deepens. If a person is brought down by their own shortcomings, is that more or less fateful than a person who is destroyed by forces outside of themselves, beyond their own control?

More importantly, if he is the protagonist of a tragedy (hypothetically, of course, for argument's sake), then which is the cause of his destruction? How has he fallen, and has he fallen at all? Which would he even prefer?

Does he need to die for this tragedy to end?

 _(Let me sleep, and dream a happy dream.)_

* * *

Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same you:  
I am able to live neither with you nor without you.

* * *

He wakes for what he thinks is the last time.

Footsteps outside his door, ringing in the echoing cold that persists in Cochlea regardless of the turning of the seasons. The _click_ of the lock mechanism turning, opening. The metallic jangle of steel cuffs. His mind is painfully clear, and every sound is a stone skipped across a still lake, reverberating in his skull. Feigning sleepiness and disorientation, he looks inside of himself as the warden performs the routine cuffing and restraining of a volatile prisoner.

The two years that Haise has lived remain in his memories as a record of his most recent past. Haise's thoughts and feelings are his. To an extent, he is still Haise. That part of him is enveloped by a more solid mental presence, one that has had twenty years to define itself. (This despite the madness that had shredded it in the last year he called himself Kaneki Ken.) He had believed that such an established identity would displace the much younger and much more fragile psyche given the name of Haise. But Akira had been right. He no longer sees any point in disentangling Haise's thoughts from Ken's. It is difficult to categorise them, let alone separate them. They are not the same, but they are not as different as they believed, either.

The schism remains. If he had time, time would have smoothed over the dissonance in his mind. A formerly harsh break would have faded into an old scar. (But he doesn't have any more time.) It would have been something he had to live with, like the hunger, and the fear, and the vestigial voices of Kamishiro Rize and Yamori. But he can't see the future. He cannot say if one day, he would have been able to sit down with a book and find that there was only himself in his own head, perusing the pages. What should he call himself now?

He banishes the useless musing to a dusty corner, along with the memories of torture, old and new, that he has yet to sift through and come to terms with. That's another thing that needs time.

The warden takes him to the research laboratory, and leaves him alone with a single lab assistant. He is puzzled. He hasn't given Arima-san his choice yet, and the lab workers have figured out the hard way that it is better to outnumber him than not. The assistant is wearing nondescript casual clothes underneath a white coat, and a mask. Not one of Uta's fantastical creations, but a medical mask to protect the wearer from common viruses or air pollution. Glasses with thick, black frames hide the rest of the assistant's face. It's a pretty blatant disguise if he's ever seen one. Because of the loose clothes that the assistant is wearing, he is uncertain of their gender.

The stranger pulls their mask down, briefly, so that he can see them smile. If it's meant to reassure him, it backfires. Impatiently, the lab worker hustles him to a seat on a cold bench, but without words. They undo a few buckles on his eternal straitjacket, so that he can free his hands. Apparently, they aren't worried about him going berserk and attacking them. And they act without fear of any security cameras which might expose them as going against the Ghoul Countermeasures Law, as an accomplice to a ghoul in whatever superficial capacity. Then they move off, to fuss with labels and vials and syringes. That is, after they've stuffed a folded note into his partially freed hands. He's not experienced with scientific experiments, but he's pretty sure that the stranger has no idea what they're doing.

He unfolds the note. It's almost cryptic enough to be incomprehensible, which annoys him more than it probably should. Hope is a more devastating thing than despair, in his experience.

The phony lab worker approaches him when it's clear he has read the note. They're holding a syringe. He sighs, but accedes with a nod.

Then blackness.

* * *

'Let's rest a bit,' he had said, as he led himself by the hand.

* * *

The light that passes over his eyelids is intermittent and fickle, like street lights over the windshield of a moving car. There, then not. Then there again. His awareness trickles slowly back into his body. He is lying in the back seat of a car with his head in someone's lap. His neck and shoulders ache a little from being in the same position for too long, and his legs from being crooked against the far door. Otherwise there is no pain. The interior is warm, and there is the low murmur of conversation going on over his head. If this is purgatory, it's rather beyond his expectations. He shifts restlessly, still waiting for the pain to flare up red and vivid, then looks up.

'Oh,' he says, as Hide drips salty tears onto his face. 'It worked.'

* * *

It's nearly dawn when Yomo-san and Nishiki-senpai help him out from the car, each of them taking an arm over their shoulders. They probably switched vehicles a number of times, taking long meandering detours over unpaved roads and between garages of safehouses. He is still somewhat muddled from the drug that affected his body's death for him. He thinks that someone in the CCG must have been complicit with the plan, that he was packed into a plain coffin and shipped out so easily. Arima-san had all but promised him that if he chose, he could be 'disposed of' without any further experimentation. Did his involvement go deeper than that?

All of that disappears when they enter the back door of :re. The aroma of freshly-ground coffee beans is heady in his senses. He can't remember the last time he had a decent cup of coffee. Pale morning light gilds the spines of well-loved books, and the trinkets crowded on haphazard, custom-made shelves. It lines the counter of warm, mahogany wood with gold filigree. Somewhere in the front of the café is an arrangement of flowers, touching the air with a delicate and cultured fragrance. Like spring clouds and new beginnings. And the light puts stars in the violet-blue strands of a certain waitress' hair, in the gem-like tears that fall from her eyes.

'Welcome back,' Touka-chan says softly, when she could have said so much more. He expects a punch later, when the moment is over.

For now, though, he smiles from the bottom of his stitched-up heart.

'I'm home.'

* * *

A/N: thanks for reading! guest reviewers with questions, check out my bio.


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